Anyone who has somehow not played this game yet should absolutely check it out when it releases on Switch. It's a phenomena for a reason. One of my best indie... ok remove that qualifier, just plain one of my best game experiences ever.

I too enjoyed Undertale a lot. It was my GOTY that year.

@Zero

I have it on Steam. However playing on my Switch is encouraging and enticing. I just learned how to setup my Switch Pro with the Steam client though so I might just start on Steam.... after Axiom Verge anyway. I just started that tonight.

@Zero

Same here, when I first played it my feelings were that it was a pretty great indie RPG, but the more I poked around with it the more I loved it. It's a Top 5 game for me for sure.

@Hero_Of_Hyrule

Yup. That's something I don't think 95% of people would stumble upon naturally, but its pretty easy to spoil some of its surprises by reading up on its existence in wikis and stuff.

It's on the Switch now! I finally started Undertale.

I'm about an hour in. I'm enjoying the music and the dialogue, with the talking stone early on being a highlight. There are a lot of fun little surprises already, such as the detail of buying items from the Spider Bake-Sale.

I've found myself slightly frustrated with the battle system though, or perhaps I just don't really understand it. But it feels like a crap-shoot in terms of what will appease an enemy if you want to not kill it. The biggest example of this is (SPOILERS about an hour in) the boss fight against Toriel. I was doing my darnedest not to attack her, but my one other option--Talking--seemed to do nothing after I chose it half a dozen times, so I moved onto Plan B: lower her HP enough to show Mercy. However, bringing her HP slightly low ended up having my guy do a huge attack instead, and the game sure makes you feel guilty about it. In the next room, Flowey implies that I've "made my choice," even though I thought I did everything possible to not kill her.

I understand that it's meant to be a puzzle of sorts, but it's kind of frustrating having to go back and try again despite seemingly attempting all the options. Or I guess I could continue onward, buuuuut...no. :p

Have my copy ordered from Fangamer (a limited edition type thing), so it'll be a while before I get to play this, but I'm looking forward to it! I'm always a bit wary when certain games are praised to high heaven, but I'm staying positive!

@TriforceBun

I wasn't going to say anything.

Regarding what I mentioned earlier, I'm curious, is it possible to do that "correctly" the first time, or do you have to reset?

@Secret_Tunnel

Oh yeahhhh. Whoops!

This is definitely one of the strangest games I've ever played. I'm about 3 hours in and it's completely nutters! It barely feels like an RPG a lot of the time, and kind of resembles one of those old point-and-click adventure games almost...?? To me, anyway. This isn't a bad thing, though, some of the dialogue and scenarios are bonkers and really funny. It frequently subverts the players' expectations or breaks its own rules to keep the surprises coming.

It's extremely linear though, which makes it feel a bit more like the game is guiding me through the motions, although it does seem to make up for the lack of exploration in the degree of character choice given.

I was a little worried going in that the humor would be too..."internet-y," for lack of a better word, but for the most part, Undertale avoids going the memey route with its quirkiness. Instead, its tone usually reminds me more of the Mother series or Adventure Time in that strange things are happening with strange creatures all the time, but that's just because it's the nature of this world (rather than being lol so randum).

I'm currently just past Dr. Alphys' lab. I haven't killed any bosses yet except that one-time thing up above, but I've slayed a fair number of random encounters. Curious to see where it goes. Music is generally very good.

So am I the only one playing this or wwwwhat? I guess that's what happens when I wait for stuff to hit Nintendo systems!

I've reached the end of the Hotlands. For some reason, this section of the game didn't quite click with me as much. Alphys is a character who's supposed to be endearing, but I found her slightly annoying and a bit too on-the-nose. She reminded me of Francis from Super Paper Mario, but he was treated as a villain, and Undertale wanted me to root for Alphys. A little difficult to do when she was frequently interrupting my adventure with her internet-y asides, was directly responsible for the killer robot trying to murder me, and it implied that she could've turned it off at any time but refused so she could continue to play the hero. The Final Fantasy 3 parody was great though; was not expecting that at all, and I enjoyed the extra bit of backstory for Toriel during the meeting with Sans. The Tsunderplane enemy was a funny idea too.

This game is starting to remind me of Conker's Bad Fur Day. Not in terms of mature content, obviously, but in the general flow and grab-bag tone. You continually move forward through unusual (occasionally genre-bending) scenarios, meeting ridiculous characters and engaging in spoofs of various media (shows/movies/games), most of which has some sort of underlying punchline, with the adventure occasionally punctuated with heavy or dramatic moments to keep you on your toes.

I'm enjoying it a lot, although I can't help but feel the scale of the world is very small. The straightforward path of the progression mixed with minimal background visual elements and a lack of much exploration combine to feel like a mini-adventure of sorts. It's not necessarily a problem exactly, but it does feel somewhat claustrophobic for whatever reason. Like the whole game is contained inside of a single RPG dungeon.

@TriforceBun

The parody you mention was one of the highlights of the game for me; I thought all of the encounters with Mettaton were some of the most creative parts of Undertale. I feel similarly about Alphys though, she's the kind of character that I find hard to tolerate--though I think that's the point, with her constant phone calls interrupting the game ala Fi.

I beat the game! ...Well, sorta. I reached the end of what I'm guessing is the Neutral route--I killed several enemies but only a couple bosses.

That was a trippy--and somewhat scary--final battle. You can definitely feel the creators' EarthBound influences through it. I didn't spare Flowey at the end because he's a butthole, but I might go back and try that again. I liked the fourth-wall elements with the save/reloading stuff, but I can't help but feel it was more effective on the PC from what I've read. Still cool though. Lots of high-concept stuff going on at the bookends of the game.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed Undertale, although I feel like I've only seen half the story. I'll have to go back and try to not kill anything, because the ending sequence felt like it was basically telling me "Ehh, go do it again." I have a few problems with the game, but I think I'll replay it and see if some of those things get smoothed out when I'm playing it the way the game heavily implies I should.

Yep you're not done.

@TriforceBun

That's exactly how I felt my first time; didn't really have motivation to go through it again, but it's worth it, and it goes by way faster your second time.

@Hero_Of_Hyrule
@TriforceBun

Nah, don't look up a guide. You know the main thing you have to do; just roll with that and the game guides you the rest of the way.

Well, I beat the Pacifist Run!

Sooo...I'm a little mixed on this one. I've been trying to divorce myself from the hype and the fanbase so as not to let it color my perception of the game and just enjoy it on its own merits. And I did enjoy a good number of things about the game: its soundtrack, the general cleverness and level of surprise, the nonviolent themes, the fourth-wall poking and the general pacing and punchiness of everything.

At the same time, I feel that a lot of elements of Undertale bother me more than it did other fans and reviewers. The battle system never felt great to me; if you're going for killing stuff, you really have a single attack option at your disposal. If you're Mercy-ing things, there are some funny actions you can take, but it often feels like a crap-shoot regardless and doesn't really have any more strategy than, say, choosing which dialogue to pick first when chatting to a character in an Ace Attorney game. And re-fighting the same enemy multiple times on a Pacifist Run just feels like busywork; I think the game might've worked best with simply a single enemy of each type existing (and it'd reinforce their lives being valued). Maybe with Chrono Trigger's type of encounters instead of random (that's more of a nitpick). I do like the shmup-style dodging because it continues to provide variety, and it gives me something to focus on since my turns are generally just picking from a menu and seeing what sticks.

I also never could shake the claustrophobic feeling. The world feels pretty tiny, and while there are a couple really small sidequests to do, the lack of a world map or more open type areas (combined with the simple combat and minimal inventory) meant I never really got that great "thirsty for adventure" feel when good RPGs really get going. Undertale played more like an odd Adventure-(i.e. King's Quest style)-slash-RPG combination. This isn't inherently a bad thing and the dialogue was generally solid, but it did lack some of the elements that make RPGs great IMO.

So it was up to the story and characters to really pull the weight. I liked them well enough, but...I'm not really sure what it was exactly, but I didn't really fall in love with them. Maybe it was one too many oddball "dating sequences," maybe it was the too on-the-nose internet-anxiety-girl personality of Alphys, but I found the cast kinda hit-or-miss. My favorite character (and probably the most emotionally-resonant sequence for me) was Toriel. She kicked the game off in an endearing way and the skeletons brought the laughs immediately afterward, but I think the storytelling sort of dipped after that. The ending was pretty cool in how thorough it was, and I enjoyed the large scale of the final battles. I also appreciate how earnest the final moments of the game are, but I feel the emotional moments didn't quite hit because we barely knew anything of Asriel beforehand, so it came across as somewhat maudlin to me. Maybe I'm the one who needs a SOUL!

Sorry if this sounds too negative. I'm focusing more on the elements that didn't work for me both because I posted earlier about what I liked and mainly because everyone and their mother just LOVED this game and its cast. I still found it compelling enough to complete twice in just over a week, the music was strong and I enjoyed it overall. But it's kind of an eight-point-something for me rather than a nine-point-something. Still worth playing for how creative it is!

...Is this how EarthBound latecomers feel after playing EB for the first time...?